Creative Discipline
It is time to unlearn some outmoded and harmful stereotypes about creativity that are, in my experience, the biggest obstacle to implementing creative education — The stereotype of the creative person as a slothful or self-destructive free-wheeler who makes no plans for the future. This is too bad because creative education is possibly the only education that will matter for Africa in the 21st Century.
Every single successfully completed creative project that I have ever participated in observed the ‘50:50 Rule’. That is, when we spend 50% of the project time on effective planning and 50% on the actual execution of said plan, competent teams generally produce excellent work in a fraction of the time taken if planning was instead rushed.
Conversely, every single mediocre or incomplete project I have ever participated in had at the root of its failure the rushing -or worse- skipping of pre-production planning. And it made no difference how talented or sober the team members were. A poorly defined goal squanders talent, time and money. Failing to plan is planning to fail.
I learned this lesson thoroughly from animators, who are some of the most disciplined creators I have ever worked with. They live under constant pressure from clients and lay management to save time and money by taking shortcuts. Unfortunately, the ungodly amount of time involved in animation and the diversity of expertise that has to be coordinated precludes shortcuts. Any compromises made by a storyboard artist for example, is paid for dearly in the editing room.
This does not mean that we cannot break rules or write new ones. It does however mean that we must respect sequence and timing. You can kick and scream all you want, but some things simply cannot be rushed. For example: the nine months of human gestation, the rising of a cake in an oven, the rising of the sun, a first kiss, any kiss, the threading of a needle, and my personal favorite — the sequence of ‘card first, cash later’ at an ATM machine. (Can you imagine how many people would forget their ATM cards if that order were reversed!) These things remind me of the Ekegusii saying Genda ng’ora, oike bwango or “move slowly so that you can arrive early.”
New innovation always occurs on top of a preexisting innovation. Even jazz which is best known for improvisation grounds the flamboyant saxophone with the consistency of the bass. Pure improvisation is noise.
A flawless plan hides in plain sight like the desert winds that shape the sand dunes. Professional writers such as columnists and screenwriters will tell you that the so-called writers’ block we hear so much about is quite often nothing more than a symptom of poor planning — not procrastination. A writer who begins with an encyclopedic knowledge of her characters’ motivations and context is less likely to get stuck than the novice who plunges into writing without the scaffolding of an outline. When we experience the fruits of a writer’s diligence we say that it is “a great story”.
Art done well expands our possibilities and challenges existing paradigms. It is the indispensable upgrade of our cultural operating system without which our future evolution as a technical and empathic species is impossible. Art is not ultimately about the pretty pictures we create, but about the source of those pretty pictures — humanity which yearns grow and blossom. If any human being succumbs to self-destructive patterns, it is in spite of these patterns that they continue to create, not because of them.
Creativity is the fusion of our dreams and actions. The hardware of our bodies meeting the software of our imagination — through which we transcend biology and become MAGIC!
